by Kelli

A yearlong investigation in Colorado uncovered shocking information. Colorado state law allows children to have access to “reproductive health services” without needing their parents’ knowledge or consent first. And at these “BC4U” — Birth Control 4 You — clinics, funded by taxpayers, children as young as 12 are able to get birth control pills, IUDs, and even Plan B….

If the child went to the pediatrician’s office without telling their parents, the pediatrician would not be able to disclose the reason for the visit, or even call and notify the parents. But parents would still receive a bill, letting them know that their child had seen a doctor without them knowing it. These clinics offer an easy way to get around that possibility, and they’re funded by taxpayer dollars and federal grants….

Unsurprisingly, if a child has any kind of complication after receiving birth control or Plan B from the clinic, things get complicated… because in Colorado, a doctor must have parental consent before treating a child….

The blatant hypocrisy in Colorado law is, frankly, stunning. Children must have parental consent in order to be seen and treated by any doctor, but the exception is reproductive services: birth control and abortion. But both of these have risks like any other medical procedure.

Teenagers also are literally incapable of weighing the risks and benefits of, say, getting an IUD implanted or choosing to have an abortion, because the area of the brain that controls reasoning and long-term thinking has not yet been fully developed in teenagers. It’s why so many teens engage in reckless, high-risk behavior. They can’t understand the potential consequences of their actions.

A 14-year-old couldn’t choose to get a tattoo, have a boob job, or even whiten their teeth without parental consent, so why is it that birth control and abortion should be the exception?

~ Cassy Fiano, LiveActionNews.org, May 20

[Graphics via bc4u.org]

The Louisiana House voted this afternoon 88-5 to join the Senate in passing a pro-life omnibus bill, which Governor Bobby Jindal promoted and has already promised to sign.

But unlike Texas, there was no pink tennis-shoed legislator trying to hold up the process. HB388 received bipartisan support, even sponsored by a Democrat – Rep. Katrina Jackson, pictured left.

Depending on the source, the enacted measure is anticipated to close either three or four of the state’s five abortion clinics. Good riddance. Quoting nola.com:

While it’s been widely reported that the new measures could shutter three clinics in Baton Rouge, Metairie and New Orleans, the clinic in Bossier City still as [sic] to work to comply. 

The Delta Clinic in Baton Rouge is being hit with a double whammy. Only yesterday U.S. Senator David Vitter, pictured right, asked the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals to investigate it for HIPAA violations. DHH has already referred the matter to the FBI.

Like so many others, Delta Clinic has a sordid legal history, including a link to abortionist serial-killer Kermit Gosnell.

HB388 is quite a piece of legislation. It mandates that:

• abortionists must have completed a residency program in either ob/gyn or family medicine
• abortionists have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles away
• a 24-hour waiting period before RU-486 is administered, just as is present Louisiana law for surgical abortions
• abortionists be in the room when a pregnant mother is given RU-486
• abortionists report all medical or surgical abortion complications to the state and FDA if medical
• clinics provide a 24-hour answering service with medical records at hand in case of emergencies
• clinics provide written notice if employees have abortion sales quotas

The new law is certain to be challenged in court.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will eventually hear the case. While one 5th Circuit panel upheld Texas’s law and allowed abortion clinics to close immediately, a different 5th Circuit panel is allowing Mississippi’s lone abortion clinic to remain open while that case is pending.

I read an interesting quote yesterday by NARAL’s Vice President of Policy, Donna Crane. Attempting to “reassure supporters,” according to the Huffington Post, she said, ”[A]lthough these (restrictive state laws) keep happening and we are losing ground, we’ve not lost power.”

By what measure?

Pro-lifers are riding a great wave in the states at present. Kudos to the many pro-life legislators around the country enacting laws to protect women and babies.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat, Pro-Life news brief:

• Margo Davidson, the cousin of Gosnell victim Semika Shaw, won her primary race in Pennsylvania. Abortion advocates pushed for Davidson’s removal after she voted in favor of abortion clinic regulations which would have protected her cousin.
• The nation of Armenia may move to restrict sex selection abortions:
  The head of RA National Assembly Standing Committee on Healthcare, Maternity and Childhood Affairs Ara Babloyan held a workshop on the topic “Sex selective abortion occurrences and causes in Armenia” where he mentions that the problem must be treated on a legislative level.Upon the discussed project, it is suggested not to inform the parents about the child’s sex before the fetus is thirty weeks old. The project is not yet put to circulation, however after the discussions it will be sent to the government.A mother of two daughters and one son, 35-year-old Marine Sargsyan from Echmiadzin says that before giving birth to her son she did a sex selective abortion three times, because every time the fetus was a girl.
• A Dutch man was jailed for disturbing a euthanization:
  The man created the disturbance at a nursing home in Waalwijk, upsetting the dying patient and family in the last moments of life, news agency ANP reports. The man also refused to leave when asked to do so.The judge in the case said he was also concerned about the man’s opposition to abortion. He considers all doctors who help out at abortions should be killed, ANP says.

A third lawsuit has emerged accusing  Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast of committing Medicaid fraud.

Former PPGC accounts receivable manager Patricia Carroll is alleging her former employer falsified Medicaid claim forms and double billed.

Carroll joins former Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast employee Karen Reynolds, who won her case in 2013 and received a $1.25 million bounty from the $4.3 million settlement paid by PPGC to Obama’s Department of Justice, and former PPGC employee Abby Johnson, whose lawsuit accusing PPGC of $6 million in fraud is still pending.

Carroll originally filed a sealed whistleblower lawsuit in 2012, but at some point the case was unsealed, coming to light on May 19 when she filed an amended complaint.

Carroll alleges Planned Parenthood’s Huntsville clinic staff ran a Medicaid fraud scheme between 2002-12 involving troubled teens involuntarily remanded at Gulf Coast Trade Center in New Waverly, Texas.

Nonphysician staff from Planned Parenthood routinely drove to the center to take two separate blood draws for STD and HIV testing 10 days apart from newly detained youths, when one blood draw would have sufficed. Planned Parenthood then filed Medicaid claims falsely indicating the blood draws were completed at its Huntsville clinic on two separate visits and by a physician.

Carroll’s lawsuit alleges PPGC “is an ineligible provider of Medicaid services in a school or prison setting.” So, she states, PPGC Huntsville staff created false charts and false office appointments to cover up the scheme. Furthermore, Carroll alleges Trade Center violated the HIPAA privacy rule by providing identities and Medicaid numbers to Planned Parenthood.

Carroll further alleges the blood tests were unnecessary to begin with, since the youth were medically screened before coming to the center.

Carroll says she became suspicious when Planned Parenthood’s Huntsville clinic suddenly showed a 315% spike in revenue, whereupon she took a closer look at its books.

If Carroll’s allegations prove true, the cover-up extends all the way up to the upper  echelons of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

After Carroll discovered the illegal revenue stream, she first approached local PP managers to no avail and finally called PPFA’s corporate office in New York, which forwarded her to PPFA’s ethics attorney, Jay Meisley, in Washington, D.C.

Meisley referred Carroll to a local attorney, with whom she understood she would be filing an ethics complaint. But that attorney, “presumably Alissa Rubin,” according to the lawsuit, turned out to be Planned Parenthood’s own attorney defending PPGC against Reynolds’ and Johnson’s lawsuit.

Carroll finally quit, refusing to file additional Medicaid claims she thought were illegal.

“Immediately thereafter,” according to her lawsuit, “[PPGC CFO] Jeffrey Palmer, [PPGC HIV Program Director] Susan Rokes and [PPGC VP of Medical Services] Laurie McGill made the decision to write-off the claims Carroll refused to release, but did not, to Carroll’s knowledge, fully inform the Medicaid Program or reimburse fraudulent billings.”

Carroll alleges the fraudulent claims were for approximately $200 each and amounted to “thousands” over the course of a decade.

PPGC garnered great media sympathy by taking the occasion of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s signing of the omnibus pro-life law in 2013 to announce it was closing three of its 12 clinics. 

Not coincidentally, the clinics were in Lufkin, where Reynolds discovered fraud, Bryan, where Johnson discovered fraud, and Huntsville, where Carroll discovered fraud.

Planned Parenthood tried to get Carroll’s lawsuit dismissed by claiming the statute of limitations had run out and that her fraud claims were not specific enough.

On May 14, District Court Judge Sim Lake ruled against PPGC on all its motions to dismiss, except its point that one of Carroll’s claim was not specific enough. In the latter case the judge gave Carroll 15 days to clarify that one allegation, which she did on May 19. The judge noted, “Carroll has adequately pleaded factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that Planned Parenthood knowingly filed false claims.”

[Thanks to Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys Steve Aden and Casey Mattox for their input]

by Hans Johnson

Believe it or not, scientists are trying to ascertain why we are so fond of babies. One of their ideas is that because human babies are so much more dependent, they’ve “evolved” a more pleasing appearance.

Or perhaps it just comes down to the enormous gulf between the human spirit or mind and that of an animal’s. We are programmed and taught to not only raise our children for a time, but to nurture them and guide them for as long as we live.

What do you think?

[youtube]http://youtu.be/2rALJido4iI[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek with your video suggestions.

[HT: TheBlaze]

by Carder

Because of a Mamas Day article I wrote on the Huffington Post about how an abortion changed the way I experience Mother’s Day, people I’ve never met requested that I kill myself, get raped, die in childbirth (as a Black woman, that is something for which I am at higher risk), and be sterilized (something that many women of color have experienced).

They asked if I have dementia (something I watched my grandmother suffer from) and hoped that I would be sold into the “sex trade” and “forced to give birth over and over again and then die from giving birth.”

Charming.

~ Abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman, describing the various reactions to her abortion story, RH Reality Check, May 16

[Photo via Wikimedia Foundation]

by Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• At Life Training Institute, Clinton Wilcox addresses the controversy surrounding Marco Rubio’s recent assertion that life at conception is “settled science.” The Washington Post decided to do a “fact check” on Rubio’s claim – or did they? Wilcox writes:
  In order to “look at the science” on the abortion issue, Philip Bump, the author of the Washington Post article, reached out to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. This was the statement they returned to him: “Government agencies and American medical organizations agree that the scientific definition of pregnancy and the legal definition of pregnancy are the same: pregnancy begins upon the implantation of a fertilized egg into the lining of a woman’s uterus. This typically takes place, if at all, between 5 and 9 days after fertilization of the egg — which itself can take place over the course of several days following sexual intercourse.”

Now I don’t know what question Bump used to ask regarding this. But notice that ACOG

didn’t answer the question

… because ACOG is a pro-abortion organization. So they have a vested interest in using flowery language, such as when pregnancy beings, to muddy the waters so that they don’t give the impression to the general American public that they are supporting the deaths of unborn human children. They were being purposefully vague and misleading.

I have no problem with the definition of pregnancy beginning at implantation. But even if this is the case, that doesn’t prove that the unborn are not human before that point. There is nothing about the act of implanting in the womb that would suddenly bestow humanity to the unborn child. But even if we take the ACOG’s statement, this would still show that since pregnancy begins roughly a week after fertilization, all abortions past that point do, in fact, kill a human being.

• Clinic Quotes shares an interesting excerpt from an obstetrics and gynecology textbook published prior to Roe v. Wade. Seems like the pro-choice movement has taken the idea to heart:
  Through public conditioning, use of language, concepts and laws, the idea of abortion can be separated from the idea of killing.
• Judie Brown discusses birth control and why the Pill “is sinful and destroys marriage, families, the bodies of women, and the lives of preborn babies prior to implantation in the wombs of their mothers.”
• Josh Brahm shares the news that his good friend, Deanna, has converted to the pro-life viewpoint:
  Deanna would tell you that two things were necessary conditions for her conversion: rigorous philosophical arguments and a loving friendship with someone on the other side. The intellectual arguments were very important. I haven’t written very much about our initial email exchanges yet, but we got very philosophical, going back and forth on issues like bodily rights arguments, rape, the concept of intrinsic human value, concepts of harm and taking away the dignity of people in temporary comas, moral objectivism, utilitarianism, stem cell research, the “after-birth abortion” paper, and the use of graphic pictures.Josh and Deanna are also willing to speak at events together, detailing their relationship and their conversations, which led her to change her position on life.

• At Live Action, Ashley Herzog gives her thoughts on DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s controversial (and frankly, anti-woman) comments regarding forced abortions:
  Following a high-profile case in which a Florida man, John Andrew Welden, slipped his girlfriend the abortion pill, the Florida legislature passed a bill criminalizing such behavior. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a so-called feminist, attacked the legislation as a waste of time.

“Florida Republican lawmakers have wasted taxpayers time and money by passing these extreme bills that further limit women’s reproductive rights. It is senseless and it’s wrong,” said Wasserman Schultz.

Since when did being “pro-choice” include supporting the “choice” of men to force an abortion upon unwilling women?…

How is a man forcing a woman to have an abortion different from forcing a woman to have sex with him?

[Photos via and Live Action pinterest.com]

 
Remember Emily Letts, the woman who filmed her own abortion?

Letts was willing to engage in unprotected hook-up sex, and willing to submit to an abortion, but one thing even she considered too risky was the birth control pill, as she explained to Cosmopolitan:

I’m a sex educator, and I love talking about birth control. Before this experience, hormonal birth control scared me because of complications I’d heard about from friends - gaining weight, depression, etc…. [and] I wasn’t super interested in putting hormones in my body.

Letts was on to something, which in this day and age of organic, homeopathic lifestyles, appears to be a growing concern among young women, including celebrities Mayim Bialik and Ricki Lake.

And rightfully so. Hormonal contraceptives - which includes the Pill, patch, ring, implant, IUD, and shot – are ridden with all sorts of dangers, such as (all information below compiled on pdf here):

• Yaz and Yasmin bc pill: 13,000+ injury lawsuits filed, DrugNews, March 2014
• Yaz and Yasmin bc pill suspected in 23 deaths, CBC News, June 2013
• Beyoz bc pill: can cause increased blood clots, new FDA warning, December 2011
• AIIMS study finds 9.5 times increased risk of breast cancer if taking bc pill, January 2014
• Even low-dose estrogen pills increase risk of stroke by 2 times: American Heart Association, 2004 and 2012
•  Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology issued an urgent warning to women taking bc pill after finding it killed 11 women and caused 350+ side effects in 5-yr study, December 2013
• Nuva Ring users 6.5 times increased risk of blood clots, Decoded Science, December 2013
• Mirena IUD: 600+ lawsuits filed for perforated uterus; 70,000 adverse events since 2000, The Legal Examiner, December 2013
• World Health Organization’s IARC lists combined contraceptives as a Group 1 carcinogen

On June 7, the American Life League will hold its fifth annual Protest the Pill Day to draw attention to the danger hormonal contraception poses to both women and babies.

Hormonal contraceptives can stop a pregnancy by aborting a 5-9 day old baby before s/he attaches to the wall of the uterus. In addition, hormonal contraceptives are poisonous to women.

June 7 is an ominous day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold v Connecticut decision, which legalized contraceptive use by finding a “right to privacy” in the Constitution, thereby opening the door to the 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

ALL is sponsoring informational protests outside Planned Parenthoods or abortion/contraception businesses and pharmacies. Find planning tips and a flyer here.

I am one of several sponsors of this event. Please help us educate women that hormonal contraceptives are extremely dangerous to their health.